3 comments

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  Randy

  1 年 ago

  It's really interesting to me that this post has gotten zero comments. I always find it fascinating when I actually expect a post to generate discussion and it just goes kerplunk.
  
  And then, posts I don't expect to get much traffic go off the hook. It's all very interesting to me :).
  
  Hmmm.
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  B.T.Carolus

  1 年 ago

  Ok, Randy.
  
  Why do you think Lindgren was "unnecessarily harsh?" Having read Running with Scissors (I've only scanned A Wolf at the Table), I came up with most of those same criticisms. It doesn't seem like Burroughs looks any further than at the child he used to be. He never takes anyone else into real consideration, including his current self. But the problem with that is that we're reading a book written by him now, not him as a child. So even the self-character is not particularly real, because we can't see a division between what the child thought, and what the adult thinks.
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  Randy

  1 年 ago

  The critic imposes his belief of what Augusten should be writing about instead of taking into consideration that maybe he writes like that for a valid reason. Perhaps Augusten hasn't come to grips with what happened to him as a child. People can mature in a myriad of ways but still be stuck at the emotional age in which they were abused. Especially when they talk about that abuse. Plus, this was systematic abuse all the way through his upbringing. He was abandoned ... completely... and had to live his life through his own eyes in order to survive. It does not surprise me at all that he would also write about that time in his life from that vantage point.
  
  Some people come to terms with that *late* in life while others never come to terms with it.
  
  I think the critic is right in that Wolf is a solipsistic affair. I think the tone of the criticism is harsh and that tone is unnecessary. Instead of being harsh perhaps it would be best for the critic to simply understand that this is simply where Augusten was/is as a writer. Instead of dumping on current works maybe exhort Augusten to expand his thoughts on his blog or do a follow up book with further meditations.
  
  Furthermore, Augusten *never* had the benefit of knowing what it meant to have a healthy two way conversation with his parents or even the possibility of that happening. Sure, much of the criticism given was constructive but it came across as rude and lacking sympathy. Augusten revealed some very vulnerable things about his life, maybe for the first time ... there is a way to make all the same criticisms without being what I perceived to be rude.
  
  I do my best to listen to others criticism and extract the good from it in order to be better. But I don't expect other writers and artists to already know and implement what "I" think they should do with their craft. Their work is what it is. My estimation is only my estimation and could be wrong.
  
  Sidenote: Many critics, in my opinion, are their own brand of solipsism and unchecked narcissism. But, that is just my estimation and again, I reserve the right to be wrong.
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